


a prelude to the end of the world

by woodchucks



Category: Z Nation (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 06:05:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15188420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodchucks/pseuds/woodchucks
Summary: Roberta had never felt particularly maternal.Or, Roberta's last words to Antoine before shit hit the fan.





	a prelude to the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a few years ago and found it while cleaning out some files on my pc. since it's probably the last readable thing i wrote (and because i will stan roberta warren until i die) i decided to post. i admittedly don't know a lot about the national guard's leave policy so please ignore any errors on my part in that regard.

Roberta had never felt particularly maternal. After essentially raising her younger siblings, and sacrificing a good chunk of her teens and early twenties to them, spending another two decades raising a brood of her own just never looked that appealing. Not that being in the National Guard (another sacrifice she’d made for the sake of her ungrateful little brothers and sister) made the idea any more attractive. When she was home, Antoine was out on call constantly; and when he was out on leave, she was active duty. For the first five years of their marriage Roberta swore she could count how many minutes they’d spent alone together on her fingers and toes

Things were different in 2013. She’d finally served enough time in the Guard to qualify for extended leave. The fire station had an unexpected influx of newbies, meaning Antoine was on-call much less than before. And one night, while they were lounging in bed watching some medical procedural, Roberta’s feet draped across her husband’s lap, he told her, “We should have a baby.”

Her first instinct was to laugh. Because he had to be kidding. But the lopsided smile he was giving her while he rubbed the sole of her foot told her otherwise. She swallowed. “Kids were never part of our plan, Antoine. Besides, don’t you think I’m a little old for that?"

He chuckled. “Ro, you’re 34. Plenty of women your age and older are having babies.”

“Yeah, but…” she trailed off, finishing the thought in her head: _those women want to have babies_.

Antoine shifted so they were face to face, her legs on either side of his hips. “I know, you decided a long time ago that you didn’t want a baby. But Ro, you were 20 then! You weren’t even old enough to drink. Just,” his voice went soft, gentle, as if she were the baby, and he cupped her cheek in one of his calloused hands, “think about it? I mean really think, from the viewpoint of where you are now. I mean we’re both at home more and aren’t you sick of how quiet it is around here?”

She wasn’t, but she smiled weakly at him and promised to think about it. She would wait a week, then gravely inform him that after careful thought her mind hadn’t changed. At least, that had been the plan. She was in the middle of reading the day’s newspaper a week later when Antoine mentioned that they’d been invited to dinner by the wife of one of the new firemen, a young man that Antoine was had been mentoring at the station. Roberta was so engrossed in a story about a man who’d been arrested for mail fraud – who the hell got arrested for mail fraud? – that she barely registered the wicked smile he was giving her.

Four nights later, dressed in her favorite brown linen pants and white blouse, Roberta waited patiently next to Antoine on the Harrisons’ porch. The door swung open to reveal a young, cheery, couple. Roberta was a bit thrown off by their blinding smiles, so much so that it wasn’t until they were all introduced and finished shaking hands that she noticed the petite brunette in front of her was cradling a rather large baby bump. Roberta didn’t realize she was staring until the young woman spoke in that lilting voice.

“I’m almost eight months along,” she was saying, “but it feels like twelve. They say you carry boys low and, wow, is it true. Gracia was never this jumpy, either. I’m glad this one’s a boy because I keep telling Carter this is it for me. We’ll have one of each, isn’t that cute?”

The three of them were looking at her so expectantly that Roberta felt compelled to answer what she was certain was a rhetorical question. “So cute.” The silence lingered so long she knew she had to say something before it got awkward. “So, um, are you going to get an epidural?” She cringed as soon as the question left her mouth because it felt way too personal a thing to ask someone you’d only known for fifteen minutes, but apparently boundaries didn’t exist in this household as Lauren launched into a long tale of doulas and breached babies and mucus plugs.

After dinner, the men went off to the garage to admire some vintage car Carter was fixing and Lauren dragged Roberta upstairs to see the half-decorated nursery. The walls were wallpapered in a pattern of baseballs and footballs and hockey sticks and a square crib was pushed up against a wall. Next to the door was a brightly colored box that housed the parts to a changing table and bags of toys and onesies and pacifiers spilled out of the sliding closet doors.

“…and this is the same crib Gracia used because those things are just crazy expensive. The moms at my Lamaze class say co-sleeping is the way to go but Carter would never go for that, ya know? He’s so old fashioned. But he’s a great dad, he always plays with Gracia and I just know him and this little one here are gonna be inseparable. Ooh, let me show you the baby monitors we got. Wait here.” Lauren was talking so quickly Roberta had given up trying to get a word in, and the younger woman hardly seemed  
to notice. She was like a bunny rabbit, hopping from place to place, even with a belly that looked like it weighed twice as much as the rest of her. She wobbled past Roberta and through the door, disappearing into another room at the end of the hallway. Roberta tapped her foot impatiently, ready to leave so she could kick Antoine’s shin once they got home. Throwing this pregnant woman in her face like some kind of infomercial for how perky pregnancy made you. She was seething just thinking about the conversation they were going to have that night, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt something soft brush her hand. She looked down and staring back up at her were the roundest eyes she’d ever seen. A little girl, no older than 2, was tightly  
clutching two of Roberta’s fingers in her own little hand, her other hand hidden behind her back. Her strawberry blonde hair was wispy and floated around her head like a halo, and she cocked her head at  
the unfamiliar woman in her house, a silent question.

“H-hello there.” Roberta smiled at the toddler, who smiled widely back, showing all of the chiclet like teeth that lined her mouth. “And how are you?”

Instead of replying, the little girl moved the hand that wasn’t holding Roberta’s from behind her back and revealed what she was carrying. It was a diaper, the pullup kind, dripping onto the carpet. “I was sleeping but I peed,” the little girl lisped, pouting at Roberta.

“Oh! Gracia, what are you doing?” That was Lauren, standing in the doorway holding a tiny screen that looked like a tablet in one hand, the other resting lightly on her belly. “Come away from Ms. Roberta with that nasty thing.”

The little girl squeezed Roberta’s fingers. “But she’s my friend,” the little one whined, mispronouncing it as ‘fwiend’.

Lauren tsked and sat the baby monitor onto the changing table box before scooping the little girl up into her arms. “We got her a big girl bed in preparation for the new baby, so we wouldn’t have two little ones in cribs at the same time,” she explained to Roberta. “All it’s done is given her a pass to sneak around the house at night.” She planted a kiss of Gracia’s tummy where her pajama shirt had ridden up.

Gracia giggled at the kiss, then gave a pronounced pout. “I don’t want a baby,” she announced, and let her sopping diaper fly across the room where it stuck unceremoniously to the wall. All Roberta could think was, _You and me both_.

~

Almost exactly a year later, when her period was three days late, Roberta waited for Antoine to be on-call before she took a trip to the drug store in the next town over to pick up a pregnancy test. It was positive. Roberta was numb as she called her gynecologist, as she drove to the appointment and waited for the nurse to complete the test, listened to her chirp congratulations as if they were both underwater

The next couple of weeks went by in a blur – mumbling the news to Antoine, who whooped with joy and spun her around and planted a firm kiss on her cheek, whispering “you can do this” as she sat, stony-faced, in his chair; fielding calls from well-meaning townsfolk who’d heard from someone who’d heard from someone that she was expecting; icing Antoine out for a few days until he begged her forgiveness for his stupid, big mouth; at one point, touching her stomach in the mirror and feeling something close to happiness; cracking her first smile in days as they walked hand-in-hand to the examination room to see the bundle of cells that had taken up residency in her body, the nurse giving them a wistful smile as she spread the cool gel over Roberta’s abdomen and waved her wand over it, staring intently at the crackling image on screen, her smile wavering; listening soberly as the quietly shut the door and threw meaningful phrases around like they were nothing. Things like “untreated infection” and “ectopic pregnancy” and “termination”. Things like “pregnancy won’t be possible without treatment”.

The next week, when the National Guard called her with some emergency assignment, she jumped on it. She needed to be out of that house, away from those judgmental walls and the puppy dog looks Antoine gave her every time he glanced her way. She left while he was out on-call, scribbling a quick note about being back the next weekend. At the bottom, she signed it ‘Sorry’.

**Author's Note:**

> and then zombies


End file.
